{"id":383688,"date":"2026-07-23T10:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/383688\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T10:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:27:08","slug":"opinion-texas-is-right-everyone-should-read-fahrenheit-451","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/383688\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Texas is right. Everyone should read ‘Fahrenheit 451.’"},"content":{"rendered":"

True story: The state that has led the nation in book bans<\/a> is requiring all high school students to read the most famous literary attack on book banning. It\u2019s stranger than fiction.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about Texas, where state laws<\/a> barring \u201cindecent or profane content\u201d and diversity, equity and inclusion programming have led to the purging of over 1,700 books<\/a> from public schools. But Texas has also promulgated a list<\/a> of texts that every student has to read, including Ray Bradbury\u2019s \u201cFahrenheit 451<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Waukegan in 1920, Bradbury published \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d at the height of the Cold War in 1953. His novel describes a dystopian world where all books are forbidden. Its protagonist, Guy Montag, is a \u201cfireman\u201d whose job is to burn them. Montag comes to recognize the power of reading to inform and enlighten human beings, but by that time it\u2019s too late: Bombers annihilate his city with nuclear weapons in a war that nobody understands.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m delighted that every 11th grader in Texas will be required to read \u201cFahrenheit 451.\u201d And unlike many of my fellow liberals, I\u2019m a cautious supporter of Texas\u2019 new list of mandated books. Imposed by a Republican-led state board of education, the list has drawn attacks from critics<\/a> who object to its inclusion of biblical passages.<\/p>\n

I share those concerns. If the Bible is taught as God-ordained fact, that will surely violate the First Amendment\u2019s ban on the establishment of religion. But I also believe that skilled teachers can present it as an engine of history, not as a timeless truth. You simply cannot understand the development of the United States \u2014 or of the world \u2014 unless you understand the Old and New Testaments.<\/p>\n

And that means addressing the many injustices committed in their names, of course. Texas 11th graders will also have to read Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s \u201cThe Scarlet Letter,\u201d which indicts the sanctimony and hypocrisy of self-proclaimed Bible believers. So does the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s speech \u201cI\u2019ve Been to the Mountaintop,\u201d<\/a> \u2014\u00a0soon to be mandatory reading for Texas 10th graders \u2014 where students will encounter his plea to white Christians to behave in more Christ-like ways.<\/p>\n

To be sure, we can all imagine teachers who might instruct these texts as gospels in their own right, without probing their present-day implications. And we can also imagine school leaders who might block such discussions, out of fear that students might actually think for themselves.<\/p>\n

That was the theme of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.\u2018s remarkable 1973 letter<\/a> to a North Dakota school board, which is \u2014 amazingly \u2014 another required text on Texas\u2019 new reading list. The board had ordered a janitor to burn all copies of Vonnegut\u2019s novel \u201cSlaughterhouse Five\u201d at a district school, on the grounds that it used a curse word.<\/p>\n

\u201cBooks are sacred to free men for very good reasons,\u201d Vonnegut wrote. \u201cIf you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community.\u201d <\/p>\n

True, Vonnegut allowed, some of his characters \u201cspeak coarsely.\u201d But that\u2019s how people talk \u201cin real life,\u201d he added, and \u201cthose words really don\u2019t damage children much.\u201d The real culprits, he argued, were \u201cevil deeds and lying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vonnegut sent his letter privately but urged the school board to publicize it. \u201cDo you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people,\u201d he asked, \u201cor will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas has shown admirable courage by requiring readings by Vonnegut and Bradbury. And I\u2019m happy that students in grades seven through 12 will have to read two books a year, from cover to cover, at a time when many schools assign snippets of texts instead of entire books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the real test of the state\u2019s backbone is whether it will allow students to examine the book banning that\u2019s happening all around them. I hope that every class reading \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d also watches the 2025 documentary film \u201cThe Librarians<\/a>,\u201d which shows Texas librarians standing up to censors \u2014 and, even, to death threats \u2014 to keep controversial books on their shelves.<\/p>\n

The film begins and ends with quotes from, yes, \u201cFahrenheit 451.\u201d As recently as 2006, Texas parents challenged Bradbury\u2019s book<\/a> because of its vulgar language and its denigration of firefighters (really). Now it\u2019s required reading for every student in the state. If that isn\u2019t progress, I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n

The new Texas book list isn\u2019t perfect, by any means. Before it takes effect in 2030, I hope it adds more nonwhite authors \u2014 such as Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison \u2014 and also texts from other religions, including Islam and Hinduism.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a good start. Book banning is a scourge across the country, not just in Texas. In my home state of Pennsylvania, for example, school districts banned nearly 300 books<\/a> between 2023 and 2025. If all of our future citizens had to read \u201cFahrenheit 451,\u201d they might also be inspired to challenge censorship.<\/p>\n

Books are sacred, for very good reasons. It\u2019s time we all learned that lesson, no matter where we live.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the advisory board of the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"True story: The state that has led the nation in book bans is requiring all high school students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130342,56137,135368,2093,135369,27,135370,29,28],"class_list":["post-383688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-banned-books","tag-book-bans","tag-fahrenheit-451","tag-kurt-vonnegut","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-texas","tag-texas-book-list-for-students","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}